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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29876442">and the next five years trying to be with your friends again</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fastclarkson/pseuds/Fastclarkson'>Fastclarkson</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Millennium Trilogy - Stieg Larsson, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>2011 Adaptation Characters, A snowball fight, Coffee and Bagels, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Post-Canon, Slow Burn (sort of?), Surprisingly Fluffy, post-original trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 02:34:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,231</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29876442</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fastclarkson/pseuds/Fastclarkson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Lisbeth is twenty-seven, going on twenty-eight, when Mikael knocks on her door and walks back into her life in earnest.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Mikael Blomkvist/Lisbeth Salander</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>and the next five years trying to be with your friends again</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Lisbeth is twenty-seven, going on twenty-eight, when Mikael knocks on her door and walks back into her life in earnest.</p><p>Of course, he’s been knocking around her life for the last two years too without her permission, but given she’s actively tried to avoid him, they don’t count to her.</p><p>She lets him direct himself through to the table while she returns to her bedroom and slips into a t-shirt, sweats and an oversized hoodie. It may be warm inside, but it’s still winter in Sweden and she’s not stupid.</p><p>He’s set the bagels out on the brown paper bag and is fiddling with the espresso machine, muttering under his breath. They’re roast beef, or turkey with Dijon mustard. She takes the roast beef one.</p><p>She’s hungrier than she thought, polishes the whole thing off before Mikael has managed to figure out how the thing works. She’d be no wiser, so sits watching him, cataloguing his attempts, to see what works and what doesn’t.</p><p>Eventually, it sputters into life and the look of boyish triumph on his face splits her between wanting to laugh and wanting to retch. Instead, she plasters over both with a look of indifference.</p><p>“I’ve got it now,” he tells her over her shoulder, then notices the crumbs. “I see you wasted no time.”</p><p>She shrugs. “You put them there. No vegetarian this time.”</p><p>He grimaces. “My daughter tells me I need to cut back on my meat intake. She’s talking about taking up veganism. I think she’s gone off the deep end there, but her mother says it’ll just be a fad. She likes milk too much.”</p><p>The espresso machine whirs and a moment later, he deposits a mug in front of her. She nods, takes it from him and watches as he busies himself with making another. It’s black, aggressively so, and the aroma is rich and heavy.</p><p>She blows and sips, tries not to burn her tongue. It goes down easy, oddly soothing the way it slips down her throat.</p><p>Mikael finally finishes, pulls up the chair opposite her with his own drink and grabs the turkey bagel. He wastes as little time as her, and she watches the bob of his jaw as he eats.</p><p>“You’ve gained weight,” she informs him, and he barks a laugh out, solitary but warm. She doesn’t ask why he finds it amusing and they sit in companionable silence.</p><p>She won’t tell him this, but she’s missed it.</p><p> </p><p>Mikael is forty-six, going on forty-seven the next time he sees Lisbeth, and it’s in the most innocuous place of all.</p><p>He’d only nipped out to the supermarket to pick up some eggs, having ruined the last two he had that morning in an attempt to make an omelette and at first, he doesn’t quite believe his eyes.</p><p>But really, even without her hair spiked up and half her piercings missing in action, it can’t really be anybody else browsing the frozen goods aisle for pan pizzas.</p><p>She’s got her eyes locked onto something in the freezer the way a cat locks onto a bird in the garden before it makes the leap to pounce and he wonders just what toppings have captured such considered attention.</p><p>“Hey,” he says, and she genuinely does a double-take when she sees him. He’s not sure what he would have expected her reaction to be, outside of maybe simply ignoring him, but she’s suddenly materialised at the far end of the aisle before he can say anything else.</p><p>He raises an eyebrow and she simply gives him a level stare in return, as if it is his fault that she suddenly decided to teleport herself across to the meatball stand.</p><p>He catches up to Lisbeth at the checkout, standing in the queue opposite. She flashes him a wary look out of the corner of her eye and he simply smiles in return. She snorts, but this time she doesn’t vanish.</p><p>He’s pleasantly surprised to find her waiting outside in the car park when he emerges shortly afterwards. She’s got a big winter coat on, with the most atypically fluffy hood pulled up around her pale face. She’s only got the one piercing in, a ring through the corner of her lower lip.</p><p>“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says, and she gives him a hard stare in return.</p><p>“You don’t scare me,” she replies, and it sounds like both a compliment and a threat rolled into one.</p><p>She walks with him to his car, unexpectedly helps load it from the trolley, but shakes her head when he asks if she would like a lift back to hers.</p><p>“I’ve got my bike,” she says, pointing somewhere over his shoulder.</p><p>“Right,” he says. “Well, thanks for the help.”</p><p>She looks somewhat uncomfortable – as uncomfortable as she ever does in these situations – and shrugs. “Don’t mention it.”</p><p>He digs into his coat pocket and offers her a cigarette. He’s trying to quit, bought the pack in January the previous month, and is slowly rationing what he hopes will be the final time out.</p><p>She takes one wordlessly and produces her own light. He leans in to accept the flame she silently offers, buffeted by the wind chill, and they stand next to his car in what he knows passes for friendly quietude in her eyes.</p><p>He won’t tell her this, but he’s missed it.</p><p> </p><p>Lisbeth is twenty-eight, going on twenty-nine when Mikael phones her and asks if she would like to meet about a case.</p><p>They’ve seen each other half-a-dozen more times since they bumped into each other in February, mostly pre-arranged coffee meets for her to sign some legal papers with his sister, but also a few where he’d simply called up and asked if she fancied a walk down by the river.</p><p>This is the first time in a long time however that he’s come to her with a job offer. She’s under no pressure to accept, and she knows he knows that too.</p><p>“There aren’t many researchers like you though,” he tells her down the line and, well damn, if that ain’t just the truth.</p><p>He comes round that evening, the windows flung open to enjoy the warm August air, and they sit in the seat beneath them, him shuffling papers as he explains and her with her legs tucked up beneath her.</p><p>They split an Indian takeaway when he gets hungry, and he outlines what he knows with samosa-stained fingers. It’s fraud, on the most basic level, at the highest level of a major car manufacturer, but he’s got fragmented leads that suggests there’s a child trafficking ring thrown into the mix too.</p><p>The sun has long since dipped below the horizon of the city and he’s still busy outlining all that he knows. Lisbeth could have seized the papers from him, scanned them, got the pertinent points if she wanted to, but it had seemed rude.</p><p>Mikael would surely raise an eyebrow at such consideration for his feelings, but she’s working on treating the people she cares about with a little more respect.</p><p>“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” she eventually asks, when the clock has ticked past midnight. “Won’t your cop lady friend be wondering where you are?”</p><p>Mikael pauses and looks up at her strangely. “We’re, ah, no longer seeing each other,” he says after a moment.</p><p>“Oh,” she replies. She’s not sure what else she can say. Apologising would sound disingenuous, even to her own ears.</p><p>“It’s quite alright,” Mikael says, as if he’s read her mind, and he looks back down at the pile of notes he has, illuminated by the sidelamp. “I’ve not told many people.”</p><p>Lisbeth wonders if it was Berger, or someone else, or nobody at all. She knew first-hand that his record with successful relationships was about as impressive as her own.</p><p>She refocuses and holds her hand out for the papers.</p><p> </p><p>Mikael is forty-seven, going on forty-eight when Millennium goes to print on their special expose in March. It’s taken six months of hard legwork and graft, even with Lisbeth’s under-the-radar skillset, but they’ve got the bastards nailed.</p><p>He’s never cared too much for the media storms that accompany these things, never has ever since he got the nickname Kalle Blomkvist all those years ago. Erika is more than happy to front up as the face of the publication, but he just wants to fade into the woodwork.</p><p>He’s surprised to see Lisbeth at his door the morning two days after their latest edition has hit the stands. She’s holding a carry-on-sized suitcase and is wearing jeans with a denim jacket.</p><p>“You have fifteen minutes to pack,” she tells him. Mikael blinks.</p><p>“For where?” he asks after a moment.</p><p>“Gibraltar,” she replies. He blinks again and shuts the door, then opens it to let her come stand inside after he realises leaving her on the step might result in incurring her wrath. She fixes him with a mild glare, by her standards.</p><p>He throws together a few pairs of jeans and shorts, a handful of t-shirts, some toiletries and underwear, and one particularly loud pair of Hawaiian print trunks, before snagging his phone charger and bounding down the stairs to ensure she doesn’t vanish if he’s a minute over.</p><p>He reads the latest novel by Anthony Horowitz on the flight over to Heathrow, and they have time to grab an overpriced burger before they board their connection. He dozes and wakes to find her watching <em>The Wrong Trousers</em> in English just before they land.</p><p>They catch a taxi to a house where Lisbeth produces a key from her back pocket and shows him in. She points to a door on the left as they move through and deposit luggage in the foyer.</p><p>“Your room’s there,” she tells him. It’s a nice room, spacious with a double bed and a window that looks out over the beaches and the sea.</p><p>It’s the most relaxing week Mikael can remember having for a long time. He spends most of his days out exploring, frequently but not always accompanied by Lisbeth. She spends the better part of the Tuesday out, gone before he wakes and not returning until after dinner. He doesn’t ask where she’s been.</p><p>They spend a few hours each day on the beach. He’s never been a sun worshipper but it’s relatively secluded, quiet for the time of year, and there’s something utterly blissful about lying half-shaded under an umbrella as the waves lap twenty feet or so away.</p><p>His Hawaiian swimwear pulls an unexpectedly musical laugh from Lisbeth, who slaps her hand over her mouth immediately after as if she’s mortified. She always wears a huge, baggy white t-shirt over her navy one-piece, says she burns far too easily for it to be worth removing.</p><p>They cook tapas together on their last night and watch <em>Strictly Ballroom</em> from opposite ends of the sofa. It’s at ease, perhaps more so between them than ever since those days wrapping up their first cases together.</p><p>“Thank you,” he tells her when they’re boarding the return flight home. She quirks a small non-smile.</p><p> </p><p>Lisbeth is twenty-nine, going on thirty when she holds Holger Palmgren’s hand as he passes away from a second and final stroke on a grey September morning.</p><p>He’d suffered it the night before and the nurses had called her. She’d dropped her sandwich and had rushed over, heart beating a staccato drumbeat against her ribcage.</p><p>She’d made it as he went into surgery, had sat on tenterhooks across the twilight waking hours, alternated between stoic silence and manic pacing around the hospital hallway he’d been rushed through.</p><p>Eventually, her mind grows too foggy to think and she calls Mikael. She doesn’t want to, but there’s nobody else she feels comfortable enough right now except for Palmgren, and he’s behind a set of double-doors she’s attempted to get through and been rebuffed at twice already.</p><p>“Lisbeth?” He sounds groggy, only just roused from sleep. “You alright? It’s… four in the morning.”</p><p>She tells him and his voice snaps to immediate alertness. He tells her is on his way and hangs up promptly.</p><p>He arrives barely a half-hour later, two coffees in travel mugs. The taste is bitter, not in the good way, as she forces it down, trying to steady herself.</p><p>The doctor comes out a few hours later, tells her they did everything they could, but that he won’t make it through the rest of the day. She’s silent, numb, unsure whether it is by choice or not. Mikael asks if they can see Palmgren.</p><p>They’re shown to a room, painted buttercup yellow and it is all Lisbeth can do to not vomit. He looks so frail, unable to move or speak, but his eyes light up when he sees one final time and she steadies herself on the doorframe, before she ends up running and screaming.</p><p>She holds his hand, and stutters over the words, her dialogue a mess. She manages to tell him that she loves him, and she feels the heat seep out of the palm beneath her as the monitor flatlines.</p><p>Mikael asks if she would like him to take her home. She shakes her head, unable to speak. He still puts an arm hesitantly around her shoulder and she leans into it for too long, shaking ever so slightly, before she pushes it off and him away.</p><p>When she gets back through the front door, she runs the bath just below the point of scalding, fully submerges herself in it. Beneath the water, she screams, lets it fill her lungs, flails up, choking, gasping.</p><p>Afterwards, she dries off and sits in her window seat, smoking. This isn’t the first time she’s felt like she’s been at rock bottom, but it’s the first time for two years. She’ll regather. She’ll regroup. She’ll come back stronger and do Palmgren proud.</p><p>It’s what he deserves. It’s what she owes him.</p><p> </p><p>Mikael is forty-eight, going on forty-nine, when he discovers that Lisbeth turns thirty in two months’ time.</p><p>“You mean you turn thirty this year and you were not intending to tell me?” he asks as they walk down the side of the Fyris. It’s cold, their breath frosting in front of them, a light dusting of snow underfoot gently crunching beneath them.</p><p>She shrugs. “Birthdays are not my thing.”</p><p>“You only turn thirty once,” he tells her, and she shoots him a particularly biting look. The effect is ruined by the pinkish hue of her nose, making her look like an irate reindeer. He helpfully supplies that comparison too.</p><p>The next thing he knows, he’s been hit in the back of the head with something cold, hard and wet. He turns around incredulously and finds the remains of a compact, crushed ball of snow and ice at his feet, then looks at Lisbeth.</p><p>She herself looks surprised that she had thrown it, a look that morphs into a sudden panic when he reaches down and begins reshaping the remnants into his own return missile.</p><p>“Don’t you dare,” she says, a threatening note in her voice. He mulls it for a moment, then hurls.</p><p>He expects her to dodge, bend her head to the right like a move out of an action movie, so he’s shocked when he gets her square in the side of the face and she doubles over.</p><p>“Lisbeth,” he half-shouts, darting over to her. “Oh my word, are you al-”</p><p>His apology is promptly cut off as he reaches her and she immediately springs up, grabs him by the lapels and belt loops and promptly tosses him over her shoulder. He hits the sleet-covered embankment next to them with a loud thump, and feels the wind knocked out of him.</p><p>He wheezes for air as she stands over him, an angry red welt forming over her right eye where his snowball had made impact. She looks almost feral, and his mind flashes back to that night in Martin Vanger’s house almost five years ago.</p><p>She kneels down next to him, places a gloved palm on his chest.</p><p>“I told you not to dare,” she breathes, barely above a whisper. She holds his gaze for a moment and something unidentifiable, almost fiery and apprehensive, passes through her eyes before she recoils.</p><p>He expects her to leave him on the ground, but she extends her hand out to him. Mikael looks at it for a moment before he groans and lets her pull him up.</p><p> </p><p>Lisbeth is thirty, going on thirty-one and her birthday is meant to be a private thing, damnit, but here is Kalle fucking Blomkvist and the whole fucking world, apparently.</p><p>She’d agreed to meet him for a drink at a dive bar down in the lower part of the city, one they had occasionally frequented before, neutral territory where she could duck out early if she wanted to if he made a song-and-dance of hitting the big three-o.</p><p>It is perhaps only her vow to try and stomach social commitments for the sake of those who care about that prevents her from bolting when she spots him with Annika Giannini, Dragan Armansky and even Jan Bublanski.</p><p>At least he hasn’t brought Erika fucking Berger.</p><p>And yet, despite herself, she has a tolerable evening. It’s even more than that if she’s to be honest with herself. They’re a collection of people, as Mikael says, bonded by their shared affection for her; his so-called Knights of the Idiotic Round Table, and they’re not going to press her anywhere she doesn’t want to be.</p><p>She feels her throat close up halfway through the evening when Mikael calls for a toast to Holger Palmgren’s memory and she has to excuse herself to go to the bathroom once she’s swigged from the bottle.</p><p>Eventually, the rest of them bid their farewells, one by one, until it is just the two of them, Lisbeth and Mikael, nursing a final whiskey sour. The grunge-punk industrial racket playing mutedly in the background has given way to seventies power-pop and he’s nodding his head along in time to it.</p><p>“Do you still see Miriam at all?” he asks out of the blue and she turns to him, smothering a raised eyebrow. “I mean,” he amends, “now she’s settled in France?”</p><p>She knew that Miriam Wu had wrapped up in Paris, decided to make the move to Marseille, keep herself away from Lisbeth and the karmic madness that seemed to follow her and those she loved around like a poltergeist.</p><p>“No,” she replies bluntly. Mikael looks like he’s about to say something – sorry, she presumes – but instead he shuts his mouth and turns back to his drink.</p><p>The first chorus hits and she finds herself unexpectedly humming it under her breath. He looks at her askew in surprise and she shrugs.</p><p>By the time it hits once more, he’s singing along, grinning, and she is too, the pair of them sat there, among the last patrons in the bar, a small smile threatening to slip out across her features.</p><p>
  <em>Surrender, surrender, but don’t give yourself away.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Mikael is forty-nine, going on fifty when his own birthday is about to creep around, and Erika informs him that she’s going to take a break from <em>Millennium</em>.</p><p>She’s heading to New York, Greger set for a year-long curation at MoMA that she feels she cannot miss. She won’t go until April, but she wants to promote Christer to spearhead the team with him in her absence.</p><p>There’s an unspoken accusation buried there, and he knows it; that they don’t talk enough anymore, that he’s too busy chasing up his other leads and projects to help guide the magazine’s direction, that they’ve not slept together for a year.</p><p>She’s right on all counts, but it still stings, and he finds himself at Lisbeth’s door that evening, knocking with a bone-tired weariness.</p><p>She opens the door in jeans and a t-shirt bearing the phrase WHERE’S THE NAZI GOLD, YOU DONKEY-SHAGGER on it and he’s too tired to even process the oddity of it being in English.</p><p>Lisbeth takes one look at him and bodily pulls him inside by the ends of his scarf. “You look like shit,” she tells him, not unkindly.</p><p>He keeps the story to the bare bones, but she still sees through some of the edges he skirts around, because her first question cuts to the point.</p><p>“Do you think she’s doing this because you’re not fucking her anymore?” she asks, and he marvels at how perceptive she can be.</p><p>“Maybe,” he shrugs, tapping his forefinger against the neck of the bottle she’d provided.</p><p>“Why haven’t you been?” she asks. He shrugs again. He doesn’t fully know himself, just knows that the thrill of the act and the emotional cognisance that came with it haven’t scaled the heights they used to for a good few years now.</p><p>The clock chimes midnight and they glance over at it. Lisbeth blinks, then reaches under the sofa and fiddles around, withdrawing a thin brown paper package.</p><p>“Happy birthday,” she says, as she thrusts it over the coffee table towards the armchair where he’s sat for him to take. She scratches her ear when he accepts it.</p><p>Mikael unwraps it. It’s <em>The Children of Noisy Village</em> on DVD. He looks up at her and she seems to be expecting him to laugh, but instead he finds himself startlingly touched, the corner of a tear in his eye.</p><p>“Thank you,” he tells her earnestly, catching her look of surprise as he rubs his sleeve across his face. Her features soften imperceptibly in the half-light.</p><p>“You’re welcome.”</p><p> </p><p>Lisbeth is thirty-one, going on thirty-two when her and Mikael check into the hotel somewhere out in the Yorkshire wilderness at the end of a particularly trying day chasing down leads for an investigation.</p><p>They’ve been following the chatter that a clutch of key ambassadors have been involved in a cash-for-access arrangement with numerous key lobbyists, including several in the weapons industry – but a lot of the reported payoffs have been done physically, old Bond villain style in a silver briefcase, leaving her more limited opportunities to land the killing blow online.</p><p>They’re both tired and spectacularly muddy, having had to physically push their rental car out of multiple ditches on the winding country roads under the glare of a sweltering summer day punctured by a flash-flood rainstorm. All in all, it has not been a winner.</p><p>They’re sharing a twin room, the only option available at this off-the-beaten-track bed-and-breakfast in a sleepy village, and she waves him into the shower first, booting up her laptop.</p><p>There’s no internet here but she still has the files, and she wants to take a second look, see if she’s somehow missed an absolutely glaring error on her part. It wouldn’t be the first time when her head has been a little fuzzy.</p><p>It hits her like a bolt of lightning, three minutes later, the names aligning, and she thinks she might genuinely let out a squeak in her elated satisfaction. It blows the case wide open, offers a straight path for her and him through to the finish – and if her broader knowledge of Swedish politics is still what she thinks it is, also links several key players to a prominent domestic abuse case involving a member of the cabinet too.</p><p>She promptly bursts into the bathroom. Mikael is naked under the spray, halfway through soaping himself up, shampoo in his hair and she wrenches the shower curtain back to find his bemused expression.</p><p>“It was Ahlberg,” she breathes. “It’s Ahlberg who set up the contacts. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.”</p><p>“Are you sure?” he says and then he shakes her head. She wouldn’t say it if she wasn’t and she knows he knows that.</p><p>She belatedly realises that he is completely nude in front of her and that she is still standing in mud-caked jeans and a grime-covered plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He still seems particularly nonplussed by her invasion of his physical privacy, but she guesses he’s used to her head-in-the-game bursts by now.</p><p>“Let me finish up in here,” he tells her, and he turns back to the faucet. But adrenaline is still coursing through her veins with the stimulating frisson she gets when she’s cracked the code and he’s right there and it’s been a long time, but she still very much knows that Kalle fucking Blomkvist is one of the few good men in the world.</p><p>“No need,” she replies, and she unbuttons off her shirt, shucks her jeans, unhooks her bra and peels off her briefs before stepping into the cubicle with him. She feels the weight of his stare, feels him drink her all in and Lisbeth can only think <em>thank god</em> when he firmly returns the press of her lips on his with a hunger to match her own.</p><p>She jerks him off as he maps her body with his hands, stuttering into her palm as he rinses her hair through. She’s let it grow longer, less asymmetrical and saw-toothed as she’s grown older over the years, but it still sports the jagged undercut he takes care to massage gently.</p><p>They make out like teenagers on her bed, sopping wet still, and he eats her out to the sound of the storm passing overhead. Later, they collapse into his bunk, blankets half-drawn to their midriff, slotted on their sides starring at each other.</p><p>“I can honestly say I did not expect that to ever happen again,” Mikael says after a moment. “But I have absolutely no complaints that it did.”</p><p>Despite herself, she smiles, small and unable to mask the gentle purr of satisfaction coiling in her gut.</p><p> </p><p>Mikael is fifty, going on fifty-one and a chalet in the Swiss Alps is not where he thought he’d spend the first February of the new decade, but he is not complaining.</p><p>He’s never been much of a skier outsider of what he had to learn on national service, but he’s discovered that, even well into middle-age, you can still teach an old dog new tricks.</p><p>The news is on muted next to the roaring log fire, the small television playing continent-wide coverage of the resignation of several major Swedish politicians and others across the European bloc on allegations of corruption.</p><p>Next to him, his phone is on silent, but he can still see the notifications flick up with regularity. He considers turning it off but leaves it on lest he need to tear himself away from his jointly-imposed solitude.</p><p>Much as they had after cracking their last big story, he and Lisbeth had left the country behind, only this time they’d got out in front and arrived in Basel before publication had even hit the web. He’d seen it go live standing in a terminal kiosk while his partner had mulled over Toblerone.</p><p>He turns to look at Lisbeth. Outside, it’s well below freezing, but the roar of the fire has made it quite hot indoors. She’s stripped to her t-shirt and briefs, the former reading MARTIANS ARE FROM MARS, VENETIANS ARE FROM VENUS in big letters.</p><p>Mikael had assumed that their physical relationship – and the looser emotions that had formed with it, he wouldn’t deny – had been long since buried by the events of last summer. But then he’d been wrong plenty of times before and he was more than happy to be so again on this occasion.</p><p>Lisbeth makes a catlike stretch, and he hears her joints pop.</p><p>“You’re getting old,” he quips, and she fixes him with a look that he identifies as the one she gives him when she thinks he is an affectionate idiot.</p><p>“You’re one to talk,” she says. She eyes him critically for a moment. “You’ve lost weight.”</p><p>“Somebody’s got me on a creative fitness regime,” he responds. She snorts as she turns her attention back to her book – <em>Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets</em> – and he looks at her and simply thinks: <em>yes</em>.</p><p>He stands and moves towards the kitchen, trailing a hand around the back of the sofa where she’s lying. She takes it as it passes, clutches it and holds him in place until he leans down to kiss her, and again, he thinks: <em>yes</em>.</p><p> </p><p>Lisbeth is thirty-two, going on thirty-three when she wakes one day in December and realises it is five years since Mikael Blomkvist walked back into her life.</p><p>It’s cold outside, and early still too, the glare of the streetlights outside her bedroom slanted through the blinds. She’s redecorated several times over the past few years, surprisingly drawn to home improvement when she hits a rut, but she’s never once considered losing the blinds. The light that slips through feels like a lost metaphor for something she can’t quite put her finger on.</p><p>Next to her, Mikael gently snores. He’s wearing a pyjama top, something of a rarity, but the wind outside is bitter and it is the middle of winter after all. She’s naked but has conceded the need for an electric blanket at the foot of the bed.</p><p>It’s so bizarrely domestic sometimes that Lisbeth has to pinch herself. She never expected this out of life, had always vaguely wondered at what point she’d pitch first into some sort of anarchy-laden death spiral, and had usually presumed that it would come before anything else of note to say.</p><p>But here she is, a year into cohabitation, a year into her life with Mikael and for all the strangeness of it, she’s never been happier. She knows she doesn’t always profess it, struggles to find the words sometimes, but he’s aware, perhaps always been without quite comprehending the depth of it.</p><p>He apologised one night, about four months ago, for letting it break down all those years ago. She’d never given any indication of what it was that had driven her away, but she knew he was perceptive; he’d put two and two together over the years, figured it out, owned up to what he felt was his guilt.</p><p>She didn’t hold it against him though. Back then, she’d been blinder perhaps to… not so much the kind of man he was but blinkered to an extent in her expectations. She’d tempered them over the years as he’d gradually wormed his way back in and now, well he was shifting her preconceptions all over again.</p><p>He snores again, this one loud enough to wake himself up and he jerks with a start. She smothers a grin and fixes him with a look instead.</p><p>“Lisbeth?” he half-mutters. “What’s up? What time is it?”</p><p>She checks the clock on the nightstand. “It’s too early for you to be up,” she tells him quietly.</p><p>“Oh, good,” he says, pressing a sleepy kiss to her hipbone before he promptly rolls over and starts snoring again.</p><p>A warmth flutters in her gut. Mikael called it exasperated fondness when she tried to explain it once before, and he may have a point, but she’s pretty certain it’s long gestated back into something else that once burned bright there.</p><p><em>But it’ll do for now</em>, Lisbeth thinks as she slides back under the duvet and shuts her eyes with a small smile. <em>Exasperated fondness will do for now</em>.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>It's been a long time since pen was put to paper here for anything in the vein of recreational pleasure, but it's emerged as an oddly therapeutic experience, diving back in after the better part of a decade out. Un-beta'd, particularly scrambled but still satisfactory all the same. Hope you find it too.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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